Former President Bill Clinton spoke at the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, where he invoked King’s memory to push for President Obama’s economic redistributionism. He linked King with Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the other pillars of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s welfare state. Clinton thanked Obama for his government interventionism and for Obamacare in the name of King. He called “inadequate income to pay for rising income” a “pre-existing condition” while suggesting that King would have hated gridlock.

“We must push open those stubborn gates,” Clinton said. Clinton suggested that the Supreme Court decision striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act was an act of continuing racism. “A great democracy does not make it harder to vote than to buy an assault weapon. We must open those stubborn gates,” Clinton stated. “The great irony of the current moment is that the future has never brimmed with more possibilities. It has never burned brighter in what we could become if we push open those stubborn gates and if we do it together. The choice remains as it was on that distant summer day 50 years ago, cooperate and thrive, or fight with each other and fall behind.”